Courage and Resilience in the Midst of the Fire

It’s been 12 months now since the bushfires on the east coast of Australia started. I’ve been reflecting on how different things are now than in November 2019. We’ve had rain, it’s been cooler  and certainly there isn’t the smoke in the air, or the orange skies that were so eerie. 

This time last year, I was running a training session with community practitioners around group work skills. We were in a very urban part of Sydney and there were about 20 people booked in for the training.  During the week however, as the fires escalated, numerous people dropped out.  On the morning of the session, as the participants arrived, there was an underlying feeling of anxiety in the room including within myself. 

In 1994 there were significant bushfires surrounding Sydney.  I had only been living in Australia for four years and my parents lived in a beautiful bushy area, overlooking the water on the edges of Pittwater, in the north east side of Sydney. One night it was apparent that the area that they lived in was under threat and everybody was evacuated. My parents happened to be at a concert at the Opera House and I was at the airport meeting a friend; watching the bushfire glow from the Royal National Park, not thinking about my parents’ house being under threat on the other side of the city. Fortunately my brother heard the reports on the radio that Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park was ablaze. He drove up to our parents’ house and grabbed a change of clothes for them, found their passports and birth certificates, let the cats out of the house and then hosed the house down. 

My parents drove back that night from the Opera House, none the wiser (no mobile phones then) and wondered why they were passing streams of cars heading in the opposite direction; until they came across the police roadblock. They turned around and eventually found a hotel for the night. The next day, residents were allowed through the roadblocks so my siblings and I, along with my parents, arrived at the house and removed all of the precious things (including the computer which had my mother‘s half finished PhD thesis on it). We could see the flames across the water, the air was thick with smoke.  It was dark and it was scary. 

Some friends were getting married that day, so I drove to another friend’s house, peeled off my smelly smoke-filled clothes, threw on a dress and then drove to the wedding. The story at the wedding was that the night before, the wedding party had been rehearsing, when people, who had been evacuated from a suburb close by, had arrived at the church seeking refuge. There is a photo somewhere of me sitting on the steps of the church looking exhausted and bewildered. I was a new Australian and this whole concept of devastating bushfires was new to me.  From that year on, the usual summer smell of bushfire smoke was enough to cause an anxious churning in my stomach. 

Fast forward many years; my father has died and my mother is living in our new house with us. Mum and dad sold their house just before dad died and I had an overwhelming sense of relief that they wouldn’t be living in a bushfire prone area any more. Our new house overlooks the bush but any bushfires would have to burn through quite a few streets to get to us, so the anxious feeling that has accompanied me every summer has dissipated somewhat. 

Getting back to that training day last year; as the participants walked in, I completely empathised with their levels of anxiety.  I told them that I had my phone linked to the fires near me app so we would be alerted if a new fire had started. As the day went on, we tried to focus but a couple of people received alerts and left. In the afternoon we were all shocked when a bushfire alert came through that was a new fire less than a kilometre from where we were. We wondered how on earth a bushfire could start in this very urban built-up area of Sydney.  

The fires raged for nearly 6 months in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland but the worst by far for New South Wales was New Year’s Eve on the south coast which was completely ravaged. 

Very close friends of mine have a holiday house on the south coast and usually spend Christmas and parts of the summer there.  As usual, they had been there but had returned to Sydney prior to New Year’s Eve.  They left two of their adult children; Louise and Elizabeth, at the house with extended family for a longer holiday.  Louise is my Goddaughter.  As I watched the news I realised that the south coast was in a very precarious position. Initially I wasn’t overly concerned, but as the hours and days went on, it was clear everyone on the south coast was in considerable danger. 

Louise and Elizabeth’s mum and I exchanged worried text messages with questions about their wellbeing. The mobile phone towers were down so there had been virtually no news for days.  Roads were blocked so journalists and news crews couldn’t get in to the effected areas.  Occasionally Louise managed to send a text to let us know they were ok but that was it.

After what seemed like forever, but in reality was a little less than a week, Louise let us know they were on their way home to Sydney via Canberra. Our relief was palpable.  I have known these two young women since before they were born.  They are brave and courageous.  They are resilient, they are funny, they are clever. Louise is a nurse and Elizabeth is a social worker. On New Year’s Eve last year, Elizabeth was also a very new mum with a very little baby. 

The day after everyone arrived safely in Canberra, Louise and I were eventually able to have a conversation on the phone where she reassured me they were both physically fine but felt terribly traumatised by their ordeal. I asked Louise if it would be helpful, once they were back in Sydney, to have some time with me to talk about what had happened.  She agreed with an audible sigh of relief.

Various family members and friends had, with good intention, told them they would be fine; they’d get over it in a couple of days; to stop talking about it; don’t dwell on it.  Even though people were trying to be kind, it actually made things harder for the sisters because they felt their experience was being dismissed. What they both needed was for somebody to bear witness to the horrifying events that they had been through, not attempt to reassure them with meaningless platitudes. 

The danger really started on the morning of New Year’s Eve when the bushfire unexpectedly raged through their sleepy little coastal village.  The local Rural Fire Brigade had been posted to more inland towns which were in the direct path of the inconceivably large fire engulfing the south coast. As all Australians know, bushfires move fast.  With one gust of wind, an ember can be blown kilometres away and ignite areas of bush instantly, especially when the ground and trees are tinder dry.

In Sydney, every summer, a large building in the middle of Olympic Park becomes the Rural Fire Service Emergency Centre.  Weather is watched in minute detail, so that winds can be predicted and personnel and equipment is deployed to the most at risk areas.  Bush Fire storms, however, can create their own weather patterns and that is what happened on the NSW South Coast on the morning of New Year’s Eve.  It is very difficult to explain the enormity of a bush fire storm.  Having been far too close to a couple whilst my parents lived on Pittwater, I can genuinely say they are awesome in a truly terrifying way.

As the early morning blue skies turned deep red, then black, the family realised they swiftly needed to evacuate to the beach to seek safety. There was no time to plan or pack anything, they just had to get out.  Louise and Elizabeth’s uncle had previously been a volunteer with his local Bush Fire brigade so he knew what he was doing.  Whilst the family headed to the beach; he, one of his adult sons and Louise decided to quickly check that other neighbours were aware of the danger and evacuating.  It was at this point that they realised the bush fire brigade had been deployed elsewhere.  Immediately the three of them sprang into action.  They raced around the village, grabbing hoses and buckets and literally put out fires as they sprang up.  They saved multiple houses where fires had already ignited.

In the meantime the rest of the family headed to the beach with hundreds of other residents and holiday makers.  In the chaos, with the daylight masked by thick smoke, Elizabeth and her husband found themselves separated from the rest of the family. They found a spot on the sand and because the sunlight had been blocked out, what had been the beginning of a hot summer day, became icy cold.  Elizabeth and her infant daughter were wearing thin, cotton summer dresses.  All she could think about was trying to keep her baby safe and warm so Elizabeth held her daughter tight inside her own dress against her body.

At some point, because in a natural disaster like this one, time stands still, the worst thing happened. The scrub on the beach set alight. Elizabeth was terrified.  Elizabeth’s husband, an arborist, raced to fight the beach fires.  which meant that Elizabeth and her daughter were left on the beach alone. 

The crisis went on for hours.  At the end of the day, when the danger had passed, the family all returned from their places of refuge; physically ok but emotionally not so much.  It was not just the immediate danger of the fire.  There were far reaching repercussions.  The electricity was down, mobile phone towers were down, petrol stations had run out of petrol, there was nowhere to get food or drinks, roads were closed for a whole host of reasons; trees had come down, power poles and lines had fallen, tarmac had melted and fires were still burning along the sides of the roads. Complete chaos.

The family then had to try and get back to Canberra or Sydney from where they were. There was no way to get back to Sydney because all of the roads north were closed, so they headed south hoping to find a way to swing up to Canberra.  The cars were all low on fuel but fortunately along the way, they found a petrol station still open.  They filled the cars with enough petrol to get them out of the danger zone but they were the last; the petrol station’s reserves were drained.  It took them ten hours to reach Canberra.  It usually takes two.  They stayed overnight at their grandparent’s house.  Louise headed to Sydney in the early morning because she had to get back for her rostered night shift as a cardiac care nurse.  Elizabeth, her husband and baby followed a little later.

A few days later, Louise and I sat for hours in a cafe talking about it.  I tried to ask very few questions. I tried not to give any kind of advice. I tried to just sit and listen and care. Louise told me about fighting the fires, about her fears but her desire to help.  How she had nightmares about fire and how seeing the endless news reporting about the fires triggered her fear.

I met Elizabeth at home.  Her experience had been so different from Louise. Louise had agency, she literally picked up a hose and fought the fires. Elizabeth however had a baby to protect.  She could do nothing except sit on the beach, totally alone even though she was surrounded by hundreds of, equally terrified, strangers.  All she could do was protect her baby and wait.  As a new mother, I suspect that has to be one of the most courageous things she has ever done and probably ever will. 

This week I delivered a seminar online to a large group of parents from some local schools on the topic of resilience. I asked them to think about some of the characteristics of a resilient person.  They came up with an admirable list; things like self assurance, confidence, a support system, and an optimistic outlook. These are all absolutely true and there are many others but for me, two additional things are really important around developing resilience.  They are; having a sense of humour and having previously been through a difficult situation and come out the other side. 

Getting back to Louise and Elizabeth, they are both hilarious.  They have made me laugh since the days they were born. Both of them also had significant medical issues in their childhood and adolescence, each lasting a number of years; Louise from toddlerhood and Elizabeth in adolescence. These years were hard for both of them and for all of us. We were anxious, we were scared and at times we had no idea what to do. But both girls came through braver and wiser. 

I believe Elizabeth and Louise had been able to develop enough resilience to get them through those bushfires because of a number of factors. They had a great support system when they were growing up.  Not just their parents and family but friends and the families of friends. They both had already been through trying situations and they both have an optimistic way of looking at things. 

One of the most important things that we can do as parents to help our children build resilience is to not solve their problems for them, but to give them strategies and scaffolds to work out their own solutions. Sometimes this can be incredibly difficult as parents because after all we love our children and we want what’s best for them but sometimes what’s best for them doesn’t always feel great. 

The second most important thing that parents can do to help build resilience in their children is to emotion coach them. Emotion Coaching was developed by John Gottman in the 1990s and has been researched and evaluated thoroughly.  John Gottman is a renowned psychologist and researcher in the space of families and relationships. Whilst we often think about emotion coaching in the context of children, all humans; adults and children alike, need to be emotion coached at times.

There are five steps to emotion coaching and it’s important that we do all of them in the order written. I like to use the mnemonic RIVER to help remember what those five steps are:

R The first letter R stands for Recognise. Recognise that your child is having an emotional response to something. This can sound really basic however with the busyness of our world, the stress of relationships, mortgages, rent not to mention COVID-19, we can actually forget to tune into what’s going on for our children.

I is for Intimacy. That we see our children’s emotional responses to something as an opportunity to build intimacy and connection. Often when somebody is having a big emotional response to something, what we want to do is to take a step back or to shut it down in some way.  Actually however, if we can see it as an opportunity to build our relationships and an opportunity for intimacy then it helps our children and it helps our relationship with our children.

V is for Verbalise. We provide the word for the emotion that the child is experiencing.  Children are not born with a language of emotions.  Adults have to label the emotion so that children understand what their internal experience is.  When there is a word for their experience they feel less alone.  Labelling our emotions is the first step in managing our emotions.

E is for Empathise. When we listen to our children with our whole bodies, our tone, our words we create connection.  This point is all about empathising with our children’s experience.  Renowned psychiatrist Dan Siegel describes this as “feeling felt”.  We all have an innate need to feel felt.  When we empathise with our children, irrespective of whether we agree with them, they feel felt by us.

R This second R is for Resolving. It’s about problem-solving, finding a way through, resolving to do it differently next time. And here is where the tricky thing lies.  Because parents love their children and want what’s best for them,  99% leap in to problem solve or fix their children’s problems. If we solve our children’s problems for them, they will never find a way to solve their own problems. Not only that but if we move immediately to problem solving, our children don’t “feel felt”.  It is in the “feeling felt” that children are able to learn how and go on to calm their own emotions.  We can’t learn to manage our emotions until we have first experienced someone managing them for us.  When children’s emotions are soothed they are then able to engage in their own problem solving.

Getting back to Louise and Elizabeth; nobody could have problem solved or fixed the issue of them being stuck in bushfires. They had to draw upon their own reserves to keep themselves and those around them safe. Their experience of being emotion coached as children and supported as children meant that even in their own terror they were able to keep it together.  Louise fought the fires, Elizabeth kept her baby safe. 

Their experience of significant trials when they were growing up and getting through those trials meant they know that even when it looks like there’s no way out; they can find a way out. That’s what kept them safe, that’s what brought them home. What they needed when they came home, was for their experience to be heard; for their feelings to be validated; for somebody to sit with them and listen.  For somebody to help them find the words to express the abject terror of being stuck in the middle of a bushfire with no way out. 

Moving forward, bushfires will always I expect, be a trigger to fear for them, however it will also help build even more resilience within them for the future. When our children experience anxiety and fear we need to support them through it, not to try and eliminate it, not to minimise it, not to push them through it; but to honour it, give it shape, give it language and to help them find their own way through.

Angharad Candlin

November 2020